http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/art/2012/04/futurism-is-still-influential-despite-its-dark-side/ An impassioned view of what's worth looking at Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:58:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/art/2012/04/futurism-is-still-influential-despite-its-dark-side/#comment-71 Patrick S. O'Donnell Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:29:48 +0000 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/art/?p=188#comment-71 Futurism as such, that is, as an artistic and social movement, had more than a "dark side," rather, it was, despite " employ[ing] brilliant, electrifying, prismatic colors," darkness itself, a foreshadowing, indeed, a foretaste of fascism. Its uncritical adulation of youth, speed, power and industry was, and remains, dangerous. It's no surprise that "Futurist artists were sucked into Fascist politics," their ideas and the art that animated them, being emblematic of the very marrow of fascism. To speak of its "excitement and dynamism" surviving is evasively if not deliberately vague and yet is coarsely consonant the cultural climate of postmodernist turb- and casino-capitalism and has little if nothing to recommend it. There's no "strange aesthetic magic" in such historical amnesia. If we are in fact seduced by this or that feature of Futurism, I suspect its owing to the dominant social, economic, and cultural conditions and processes that have persisted from the early twentieth century into our time and place (and increasingly into the most remote parts of the globe). Seduction in this instance can only have nefarious consequences. Futurism as such, that is, as an artistic and social movement, had more than a “dark side,” rather, it was, despite ” employ[ing] brilliant, electrifying, prismatic colors,” darkness itself, a foreshadowing, indeed, a foretaste of fascism. Its uncritical adulation of youth, speed, power and industry was, and remains, dangerous. It’s no surprise that “Futurist artists were sucked into Fascist politics,” their ideas and the art that animated them, being emblematic of the very marrow of fascism. To speak of its “excitement and dynamism” surviving is evasively if not deliberately vague and yet is coarsely consonant the cultural climate of postmodernist turb- and casino-capitalism and has little if nothing to recommend it. There’s no “strange aesthetic magic” in such historical amnesia. If we are in fact seduced by this or that feature of Futurism, I suspect its owing to the dominant social, economic, and cultural conditions and processes that have persisted from the early twentieth century into our time and place (and increasingly into the most remote parts of the globe). Seduction in this instance can only have nefarious consequences.

]]>